All About Eve is showing at the Metrograph cinema in New York today at 3:45 pm (EST), with further screenings on Monday, February 17, and Wednesday, the 19th, as part of 15 Minutes, a film series exploring the darker side of fame.
“The lure of fame, fame, fatal fame does terrible things to the characters in this series: cracked individuals who will do anything to claw their way into the spotlight, or back into it … A frothy-yet-venomous comedy of contested succession, bitchy put-downs, and catty misbehavior, Mankiewicz’s signature work stars Bette Davis as aging Broadway diva Margo Channing; Anne Baxter as the wanton, willful young up-and-comer Eve Harrington, aspiring to take whatever Margo has, both on-stage and in the boudoir; and George Sanders as Addison DeWitt, the acerbic theatre critic who’s only too happy to stoke the flames of their rivalry. Recipient of a record-setting 14 Academy Award nominations, including four Actress nods, for Baxter and Davis as well as supporting players Thelma Ritter and Celeste Holm.”
A 1951 article about the making of All About Eve has been reposted on the American Cinematographer website this week, in honour of what would be director Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s 116th birthday. It was originally published ahead of the 23rd Academy Awards, in which All About Eve won in six categories, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Adapted Screenplay.
Also nominated for Best Cinematography (Black and White) was Milton Krasner, whose collaboration with Mankiewicz is the article’s main focus. He lost to Robert Krasker for The Third Man, but went on to win an Oscar for a Technicolor feature, Three Coins in the Fountain (1954.)
Marilyn’s second scene as aspiring actress Claudia Caswell was shot on location – with a San Francisco theatre doubling for the film’s New York setting, as discussed below. All About Eve was the first of her five films shot by Krasner, and they would collaborate again on Monkey Business, O. Henry’s Full House, The Seven Year Itch, and Bus Stop.
“All About Eve is Krasner’s third picture in a row for Mankiewicz. Functioning as a team, once shooting preparations began, Krasner and Mankiewicz plotted the photography of Eve in a number of huddles that saw them make location scouting trips together to San Francisco, and later to New York to select theatre exteriors against which so much of the action takes place.
On March 15, with the script virtually completed and the most pressing production problems settled, the two flew to New York. There, using doubles for Bette Davis and Celeste Holm, they shot the exterior of the New York theatre which would tie in with the scenes to be shot later in the Curran Theatre in San Francisco. The exteriors of the ’21 Club’ and Eve’s Park Avenue apartment were also photographed as establishing shots for interior scenes and for background plates for scenes to be shot later at the studio.
Shooting at the Curran Theatre began on April 11, as scheduled. The theatre echoed with activity as Krasner and his camera crew prepared … These interiors were the scenes that had to match those made earlier in the Golden Theatre in New York … With the San Francisco location shooting wrapped up, the company returned to the studio where it settled down for more than a month of solid work.
Here the studio had reproduced in infinite detail interiors of New York’s famous Stork Club and Club 21 … After a year in preparation — the last six months on a full production scale — the picture was finished. Over 100,000 feet of negative film had passed through Krasner’s camera and more than double that amount of positive film and sound track printed to get the fourteen thousand feet in which the story of Eve is told.”
The Marilyn Report 